A time to mourn

The country we envisioned just doesn't exist

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

Well, the worst happened. Trump won.

You may recall what I wrote on Tuesday morning:

If the worst happens and Trump wins, we must not lose heart.

The temptation for many will be to give up. We’ll have worked so long and hard to save our country from this authoritarian criminal that it will be tempting to say that democracy is over. And I’ll be honest with you: I’ll be tempted to say that myself. What rational person could look at the results of a Trump victory and conclude that the American people are firmly committed to democracy?

Although I pray Harris will win the popular vote decisively, a Trump win will be a severe blow to democracy. It will be a serious blow to women’s reproductive freedom. Millions of immigrants, minorities, and people in other vulnerable groups will be at risk. Western Europe will almost instantly be at risk of a wider war, given the expectation that Trump will hand Ukraine to Putin on a silver platter.

In other words, it will look to you and me that the world as we know it has ended and that we should surrender.

But that’s precisely what Trump and his people have been hoping for from the first day of his candidacy. They want us to give up. They want us to quit fighting. They want us to turn the keys of this country over to them and allow them to transform this into a country of, for, and by white Christian nationalism.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t believe it would come to this. I naively thought that a majority of Americans — especially in those swing states — would not restore a fascist criminal to the White House.

Like many of us, I underestimated the goodwill of the American people. I underestimated their decency and tolerance for “the other.” I underestimated the desire of white women for body autonomy.

Most of all, I underestimated the power of the tenets of my Christian faith to prompt enough people to do the right thing.

I did not understand the dark place where Trump has led the country.

I did not comprehend how much Americans want a fascist government (even if that’s not what they call it).

In the end, I think most Americans will not want what Trump gives them, but like a couple of European countries 80 years ago, I fear it will be too late to reverse course when those Americans wake up to the hate and violence they enabled. (It’s also possible that it will be exactly what a majority of our fellow Americans wanted.)

I’ll write more about this in the coming days, but for now, I’ll leave you three thoughts:

1. I cannot explain this result to my daughter and others except to say Americans saw racism, incompetence, criminality, and misogyny and said, “Give us more of that.” They know who Trump is and liked what they saw.

2. We are about to discover that the U.S. Constitution is little more than a piece of brown paper. I once said it was only a collection of norms. It’s not even that. It’s what Trump’s lackeys say it is.

3. And, finally, if you ever wondered what you would have done while the Nazis were busy rounding up vulnerable minorities and throwing them into internment camps, you’re about to find out.

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Another view

I thought journalist Michael A. Cohen (not that Michael Cohen) captured my feelings and my worries well in on Substack this morning. I want to share his conclusion with you:

I write this having literally not slept at at all tonight, this is crushing for those of who believed that America was a good and empathetic country that would never reelect this horrible man. I’m sure I speak for many of you when I say “I feel broken.” I’m honestly not sure that American democracy can survive this calamity. It’s even more difficult to imagine how we come together as a nation. America feels hopelessly and irretrievably divided.

What I fear will make his victory so much worse is that it’s hard to imagine that liberals will continue to engage in politics the same way they have the past eight years. Trump has exhausted all of us. Democrats are quite likely retreat to their safe liberal cocoons and frankly who can blame them. If half the country wants to live in the nostalgic past, where women die in childbirth because they can’t get access to health care, and cruelty not empathy is the country’s defining impulse then let them. I’m not endorsing that view, but I’ll be honest it’s a lot more difficult caring about politics and policy outcomes than it was 24 hours ago.

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Now, it’s your turn

I invite you to share your thoughts about yesterday’s election in the comments below. In particular, please share how you’re coping with this and your next steps.

In other words, let’s use the comments today to support each other, particularly those we know will suffer the most under the new regime. If you have some hopeful words, we need to hear them today.